CHAPTER 26
When time was on your side, interrogations could take as long as you wanted. They could play out over hours, days, or even weeks. With long-term detainees, interrogations could stretch months or even years. It all depended on how quickly you needed the information and what lengths you were willing to go to get it.
When time was a key factor, Harvath’s definition of what was acceptable broadened dramatically. He nodded, and Asher flipped on the blinding halogen lights that had been set up on stands. Walking over to Hendrik, he pulled the bag from his head.
The man squinted and tried to get a good look at Harvath, but the lights were too bright. All he saw standing in front of him was a silhouette.
“Mr. Hendrik,” Harvath began. “I am well aware of your background and your training, so I won’t insult you by trying to build some sort of rapport. You have information I want, and I am in a hurry.
“If you cooperate, this’ll be over fast. If you don’t cooperate, this will still be over fast, but it’ll be much more painful for you. I’ll give you one chance to answer my questions. If you lie to me, or if I feel you are being evasive, all bets are off. Understand that I will go to any lengths necessary to extract from you the information I need. Is that clear?”
“Who are you?” Hendrik demanded.
Harvath gave the man an open-handed slap across the side of his face.
“That was for being evasive. You don’t ask the questions. I do.”
The South African spat a gob of blood onto the floor, squinted at him and replied, “You’re American.”
This time, Harvath hit him in the same spot, but with his fist. The blow was so hard, it rocked him to the point of almost tipping over in his chair.
“Fuck you,” said Hendrik once he had recovered.
Harvath was done playing games.
Striking him again, he demanded, “Why were you at the Matumaini Clinic?”
“Fuck you,” the man repeated.
Harvath put the bag back over his head and nodded to Ash and Mick. The two men circled around behind the South African’s chair, grabbed hold of it and tipped it backward. As soon as they did, Harvath began pouring water through the fabric over his face.
Hendrik’s body tensed, and he began to thrash wildly. Harvath stopped pouring the water and the Brits leaned him upright.
“Why were you at the Matumaini Clinic, Jan?”
Hendrik coughed and spat up water as he tried to catch his breath. Harvath gave him several more seconds and when he didn’t answer, he nodded for the Brits to tip him over again, and he once more began pouring the water.
Exhausting his first pitcher, Harvath reached for a second. Hendrik thrashed even harder than before.
The tactic was inelegant but simple. He took no pleasure in it. It was simply a tool in the toolbox. All Hendrik had to do was cooperate, and it would be over.
“Why were you at the Matumaini Clinic?” Harvath asked as he eased up on the water.
The South African sputtered and hacked from beneath his hood, trying to clear the water from his airway.
“Whoever pays you, Jan, isn’t paying you enough to go through this. Tell me why you were there, and I’ll make it stop.”
Hendrik managed a third, “Fuck you.”
It went on and on. The floor was puddled with water and Harvath’s shoes, as well as his trousers, were soaked. When pitcher number two was empty, he started in on number three.
The South African was one tough son of a bitch, but no one could hold out indefinitely. Everyone broke under waterboarding. It was only a matter of time. Hendrik was about to reach his breaking point.
“Humanitarian,” he gurgled from beneath his drenched hood as he coughed and vomited up water.
Harvath motioned for the chair to be righted and waited for the man to catch his breath. Once he had, Harvath asked, “What did you say?”
Even when the hardest of men cracked, what they said had to be treated as suspect until independently confirmed. Sometimes things came pouring out in an obscure torrent. What they said could be true, could be the effect of psychological torment, or it could be complete and total bullshit.
Harvath motioned Ash and Mick back behind the lights. Once they were there, he pulled off Hendrik’s hood.
“Listen to me,” he said. “If you lie to me, you’re going back under the water. Do you understand?”
Hendrik shook his head from side to side, confused. Harvath slapped him and reached for another pitcher.
“It was a humanitarian operation,” he said feebly, trying to focus.
“A humanitarian operation?” Harvath said. “You wipe out a clinic and cremate an entire village and call that a humanitarian operation?”
“It needed to be contained. More would have died.”
“What needed to be contained?”
“The infection.”
“What infection?”
Hendrik didn’t reply and so Harvath slapped him again.
“One of the patients got out,” the South African stammered.
“From the Matumaini Clinic? What are you talking about?”
Hendrik failed to answer, so Harvath picked his hood back up and began to put it back over his head.
“Not Matumaini,” he said as the hood came down. “Ngoa.”
Harvath pulled it back up. “What’s Ngoa?”
“A village. There’s a WHO facility there. A lab.”
“A World Health Organization lab?”
The man nodded.
“What were they working on?”
“I don’t know,” Hendrik replied.
The answer came a little too quickly for Harvath’s liking. There was also the flash of a microexpression that told him the South African was lying.
Fixing his gaze on Hendrik, he said, “You’re lying to me. What happens when you lie?”
“I am not lying,” he pleaded as Harvath roughly pulled the hood down over his head and waved the Brits back over.
Harvath picked the pitcher back up as Ash and Mick tilted the chair backward.
“Hemorrhagic fever!” the man yelled. “They were experimenting with African Hemorrhagic Fever!”
“Like Ebola?”
“Worse.”
“How much worse?” Harvath demanded.
Hendrik refused to respond, so Harvath started pouring water again over his nose and mouth.
“They found a way to weaponize it!”
Harvath poured again. “Tell me how.”
“Airborne!” the South African confessed, shaking his head back and forth, trying to make the water stop. “They found a way to make it airborne!”
CHAPTER 27
Clifton — the luxury, four hundred and eleven acre estate and farm, an hour outside Washington, D.C. — had belonged to George Washington’s cousin, Warner Washington. Pierre Damien loved it as much for its history as he did for its exquisite Classical Revival manor house and the panoramic views of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
George Washington had spent extensive time on the property and when Damien walked the grounds, he liked to imagine himself walking in the footsteps of history. Damien wondered, if Washington were alive today, would he see the world the same way. Would Washington realize that in a modern era such as this, certain viewpoints and philosophies of government had run their course? Wouldn’t such a noble man realize that individual, selfish pursuits only served to harm mankind, not advance it? And as a farmer, a true man of the soil, certainly Washington would recognize the responsibilities that all human beings had to the planet.
Taking a deep breath of crisp fall air, Damien breathed in the scent of nature. The colors along the distant mountains were extraordinary. There was no better place to be in autumn. Of all the properties he owned, even his private Cay in the Bahamas, Clifton was his favorite. It was why he had wanted to bring Helena here. That, and there were final preparations to be made. Tonight would be the organization’s last dinner for some time.